The UK Government Takes Another Step Towards Ratification of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement

18 January 2016

The UK Government has concluded its consultation on the secondary legislation implementing the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) and EU Regulations establishing the European Patent with Unitary Effect (EPUE).

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) ran a technical review and call for evidence between 10 June 2014 and 2 September 2014 on draft secondary legislation which proposed changes to the UK Patents Act 1977 to introduce the UPC and the EPUE. There were twenty responses and these were published on 12 March 2015. The UK Government has now reviewed and given due consideration to the twenty responses. The Government 's response and proposals can be found here.

We expect the UK Government to bring forward legislation to implement the UPC Agreement in due course.

The UPC preparatory committee is aiming to complete its work on the UPC by mid-2016, in principle enabling the court to open in early 2017. However, the court will not become operational until the Agreement has been ratified by at least thirteen member states including the states in which the highest number of European patents had effect in 2012, namely the UK, France and Germany. Austria, France, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Malta, Luxembourg and Portugal have already ratified the Agreement, but the UK and Germany have not.